I’ve never seen anyone revise this much – what’s the matter with you?
That is meant in the most encouraging way possible.
A few things –
his pulse a jagged thrum in the blood:
Firstly, I don’t see the purpose of the colon. A dash would do fine. A comma would do fine. And remove ‘jagged’ – ‘his pulse a thrum in the blood’ beats far more liquidly for me, without the overdone I’m-obviously-trying-to-be-sharp word, ‘jagged.’
chalk scrapes the blackboard,
Why does this seem so mundane? Chalk scrapes the blackboard; of course chalk scrapes the blackboard! The only reason why chalk is there in the first place is to subtly continue that ‘breaking’ metaphor, so I don’t see why you can’t just have ‘chalk crumbles / into algebraic equations’ or whatever you prefer.
There is an art of silence in poetry, of saying as much as you can in as little space as possible.
breaking into splinters
Er. I think I have explained this on other occasions; don’t use a simile or image where the two things being compared are too close anyway – it sounds weird. You might only have said ‘chalk’ and ‘splinters’ (like the time you said, ‘knife’ and ‘pulse’ and I jumped to ‘wrist’) but the reader is going to jump to ‘wood’ and comparing chalk to wood…not working.
However, I did appreciate that you were trying to extend the motif, so good effort in that regard.
as algebraic equations
scratch their patterns,
the numbers slicing into his skull,
A very scratchy, slicey theme. What about breaking?
Patterns cut through him…patterns are breaking him; the pattern of life is breaking him, the regularity of it, no? You’re going to need a far, far less obvious way of phrasing that.Also – I’m going to get all technical on you and say patterns are depicted by expressions while single answers by equations. Of course, entirely irrelevant, but that juxtaposition of equations and patterns was annoying me from the outset, so I thought I’d mention why *I* thought so.
he cuts through the hallway crowds,
each brief accidental touch
a flicker of heat—
then a quick break.
The proximity of so many words to describe the concept of ‘rapid’ is destroying the rapidity. ‘Cuts,’ ‘brief,’ ‘flicker,’ ‘quick,’ ‘break.’ Snip some out….example: ‘through the hallway crowds / there are touches / brief, accidental; the meet and break of eyes / awkward as skin.’
yellowed walls slanting to enclose him,
tiles cracking into fragments at his feet as
he stares in the grimy mirror,
Your adjectives bother me – ‘yellowing’ and ‘grimy’. Possibly because they’re so predictable thanks to all your former imagery, possibly because they seem tacked on purposelessly. And you’ve got enough of a mouthful here, anyway, word-wise. ‘Into fragments’ is a stretch, and an unimaginable stretch at that – must be the most run down school ever to have bathroom tiles cracking into fragments as he steps on them. Shouldn’t they already be cracked?
his reflection warped at the corners,
Yes, yes, yes. This should be the ending, since what follows after is overkill. Maybe a line of sentiment or thought; but I would not want you to ruin it, so maybe not.
I mentioned this to you before – feeling. I wanted more feeling out of this, beyond the intellectually-oriented extended metaphor. Read this. You’ll see why I thought of it, what I mean.
Navi